


Good Love Lingers On

by DeathStarryNight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo is a Mess, Devoted Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, F/M, Jedi Ben Solo, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, POV Ben Solo, Redeemed Ben Solo, Unredeemed Hux, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21919648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathStarryNight/pseuds/DeathStarryNight
Summary: "When they tell my story through will they speak of my love for you?"A year after Rey went missing on a mission, they find her, bruised and broken but alive.  But she can't remember Ben Solo, not how he joined the Resistance or tried to destroy the First Order.  Or how he loved her."I always meant to tell you but I always thought you knew: I saw forever the moment I saw you."
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 47
Kudos: 261





	1. In the wake of disaster, will you sink down to me?

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably a terrible time to post this because I haven't seen Rise of Skywalker yet and I'm going tonight. Ah! Regardless, I'm planning on posting daily, since this fic is finished, assuming I have a computer with which to do so. Let me know what you think!

Ben strode through the hangar, ducking out of the way of a shower of sparks that rained from an x-wing’s cockpit, his boots clicking against the duracrete floor. The enormous body of the Falcon came into view. Several metal plates lay scattered in its shadow, blackened by blaster fire. Part of the hull still emitted a thin line of smoke. A head popped up as he stopped to inspect the underside of the ship.

“How is she?” he asked, drawing a loving hand across its metal surface.

Rose jumped down, wiped her hands on her jumpsuit, and pushed her hair out of her face. “She’ll live,” she said and patted the ship’s side. “The Falcon’s a strong one. You can’t kill her.” Rose eyed him. “Which is what I told you this morning, Ben. What is it?”

Ben sighed and leaned back against the hull of the ship. He ran a hand over his face. “I can’t sit still,” he admitted.

He looked up when she put a hand on his shoulder. The touch was still rare enough to surprise him. “They’ll be back soon.” Worry lines creased her face. She couldn’t promise that, no matter how much she wanted to believe Finn would return. “I’m sure you have important things to do, but I could always use a helping hand.”

He took the wrench she offered and put his foot on the first rung of the ladder to follow her up onto his beloved ship, but someone tapped on his shoulder. “Captain Solo, sir, General Organa needs to see you.”

Ben sighed and looked up at Rose, who held out her hand for the wrench. She shrugged. “What Leia wants, Leia gets. Next time I’ll get you covered in engine grease.”

“Thank you,” he said and meant it. He left behind the sharp smell of metal and the grind of gears for the relative quiet of Leia Organa’s command center. He ignored the rebels typing quietly on holoscreens and stopped where his mother stared at a projected map of the galaxy. As he watched, she tapped a small icon and moved it to the other side of a solar system.

“Since you showed up, I assume they haven’t returned.” She took his silence as proof. “How are you, Ben?”

“Fine, mother. You wanted something?”

She turned to scrutinize him. “There’s a Destroyer headed into the Leena System,” she said with a frown.

His blood ran cold and he was momentarily distracted. They had a squadron deployed in the Leena System to deal with some minor issues. “Did you alert the squadron?”

“They’re radio silent. The System is too close to the First Order. The message could be intercepted.” Leia shook her head.

“We have to warn them,” Ben said. He braced his hands against the table and thought. “Send a pilot.”

Leia thought about it. “They won’t clear the system before the Destroyer’s in range.”

“They can move behind the moon of Sinora. They won’t be able to contact us, but they’ll be off the radar until the Destroyer passes,” he suggested.

Leia frowned at the projection, where she had moved the icon behind the moon. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“I did it myself once. It’ll work,’ he said with more confidence than he felt. Hiding one ship, even one the size of the Falcon, was far different from hiding an entire squadron. Leia finally nodded and instructed him to set it up.

“I know you’re not fine,” his mother said to his back as he turned away. “Don’t lose hope.”

Hope was thin on the ground for him. It had been for almost a year. He found a good pilot and relayed the mission. His first choice would have been Dameron, as incredible as that seemed, but he was still off on his mission. Ben normally would’ve gone himself on something so dangerous, but he couldn’t leave. Not now. His task done, he considered returning to Rose and the Falcon to quiet his pacing, but what he really wanted, if only for a minute, was silence, to contemplate what it would mean for him if this mission failed – or succeeded – and let free the pain he kept chained up. He headed for his quarters instead.

A few rebels sent him glances along the way. Those looks had never really gone away, even in the two years since he’d given up Kylo Ren forever and defected to the Resistance. The relief he expected when he closed the door to his quarters didn’t come. He crossed the room and took out a worn box. Inside rested his lightsaber, which he used only rarely now. The space beside it, where Rey’s should have been, was empty.

Ben closed his eyes and fought the rising pain, like a stab to the heart. When he’d finally cleared all the interrogations and skepticism of joining the Rebellion, Leia had assigned him single quarters, so no one would kill him in his sleep, although spare few had single quarters. But Rey had soon solved that problem by effectively moving in only weeks later. Evidence of her presence still lingered around the room: that cloak she threw over the chair that drove him mad, her staff in the corner, a pair of boots still pushed halfway under the bed. He’d never had the heart to move them.

Ben sighed and dropped his head to his hands. Almost a year. Almost a year since Rey had gone missing on a mission. That had been bad enough. Worse was finding the Falcon wrecked on some moon and her hastily scrawled note pinned under the controls. He pulled out the wrinkled paper, so worn it had almost fallen apart and the words were barely readable.

_ Ben, _

_ I know you’ll search for me and I know you’ll find her. The First Order shot me down (replace the calibrator), they’ll be here in a minute. The data is in the smuggler’s place. I’m sorry. Don’t look for me. _

_ I love you. _

He clenched that stupid note in his fist. The protesting paper crunched and creased, and he hurried to smooth it out. He hadn’t listened. He’d been searching for her ever since.

Ben remembered stepping down from the Falcon when he returned from his first mission alone, during which he’d been cornered by some stormtroopers and almost killed. There was a decent crowd gathered to witness his return from his first solo mission, but he saw only Rey’s furious face. She marched right up the ramp and slapped him across the face. He held his burning jaw as she yelled at him.

“How could you risk yourself like that? You idiot! You could’ve been caught! And then what?” He waited through her whole speech until she finally fell silent, grabbed him by his shirt, and kissed him before the whole rebel alliance. It was the first time she’d ever kissed him in public. The entire resistance gasped. He’d received death threats for weeks.

A knock at the door brought him back to the present. He whirled and pressed the button to open his door. Poe Dameron stood there, chest heaving.

Ben glanced over the pilot to make sure he was unharmed before grasping him by the shoulders. “Rey?” Poe nodded.

The pilot filled him in as they practically sprinted down the hall. “It was almost too easy…yes, we’re sure we weren’t followed…we haven’t gotten much out of her. She’s confused and dehydrated. Yes, the healers are attending to her now. Finn and Rose are with her.”

Poe stopped outside the door to one of the medbay rooms and gestured for him to enter. Ben hesitated. It had been almost a year since he’d seen his bright, beautiful Jedi. He took a deep breath and entered. Finn and Rose sat huddled together, the former clutching one of Rey’s hands. Healers and Med-Droids bustled on the other. And Rey…

She looked so small between them, bacta patches plastered over bruises and superficial cuts, new scars peppering her pale face. Her eyes were closed, sleeping. Ben felt his knees buckle and braced his hand on the doorjamb to keep from falling.

“Rey,” the word escaped him involuntarily, but her eyes snapped open at the sound of his voice. Her hazel eyes locked onto him where he hesitated in the doorway.

And then she screamed.

Rose and Finn jumped to hold her back as she thrashed against them and tried to get up. “Monster,” she screamed. “I’ll kill you!” The force bent around him and one of the windows shattered. 

He stared at the twisted anger of her face, so unfamiliar now. She had said those words to him before so many years ago. She continued to fight to get to him, to throttle him where he stood.

Ben left with his heart in more pieces than before.

~ ~ ~

“It appears that her memory has been wiped, sir,” Rey’s lead healer said to him. Poe sat with his head in his hands. Ben paced and tried to check his rage. Rose and Finn were present too, now that Rey had fallen into a fitful, bacta-induced sleep.

“How much of it?” he asked.

It’s unclear right now. When she’s more stable, we’ll run some memory tests and see what she can recall,” the healer said. Ben couldn’t remember her name.

“She remembered us,” Poe offered. “Even Rose.”

_ Just not me _ , Ben thought. Or at least everything that had happened in the last two years. He shook himself. “How is she otherwise?”

“Her current wounds are superficial and the bacta will heal them quickly,” she said in a measured tone.

Ben stopped his pacing and fixed her with the type of stare that set most people running. “Her  _ current _ wounds?”

The healer winced. Sweets. That was her name, he remembered suddenly. “She has older wounds as well that we’re working on healing.”

His insides twisted. Hux’s famous cruelty. “What wounds?”

Healer Sweets swallowed hard. “There’s evidence of torture, sir,” she choked out as if afraid he would pull his famous lightsaber and temper from nowhere. “Some burns, scar tissue, bones broken and reset repeatedly.”

He fought to contain the rising bile and anger in his throat. He recalled her at the hands of Snoke, twisted and tortured and pleading for his help. She’d had so much hope, even then. Hope that he would see the error of his ways and return to her and the light. At the time, he’d failed her, as he’d failed her every time before that. But it hadn’t taken him long to realize his mistake, the one he once thought irreparable. That old wound opened in his chest again and ached like a lance through his heart. He’d thought those moments behind them. He’d thought he’d never again have to see the look of hatred in the glances Rey sent him.

He would have traded every one of their good memories to free Rey from that kind of torture.

As it turned out, Rey remembered a lot of things. For instance, she remembered Finn, but she also remembered Poe and Rose, whom she hadn’t met until after Snoke’s death. She remembered his lightsaber through Han’s chest and leaving him scarred in the snow. She even remembered Crait and Sorice, the outer-rim planet they’d been stationed on before this hunk of rock.

What she didn’t remember, it seemed, was him. At least, anything positive about him. And she certainly didn’t remember him joining the Resistance. Or loving her. 

The healer—a different one this time, he’d recognized her as the head medic—had told him that Rey had to remain unaware of their prior relationship. “It’s what’s best for her,” she’d stated with a matter-of-fact tone and a sympathetic look. “She has gaps in her memory from the last year and is trying to deal with the trauma and readjust to life here. It’ll confuse her if we tell her she loved a man whom she thinks is her enemy now.”

Ben winced at the word enemy but nodded. “I get it,” he growled at the innocent healer. “Don’t tell her.”

She patted him on the shoulder, which he thought was very brave of her, and said, “I know this must be very difficult, but don’t give up on her. There’s a chance she could regain some or all of her memories with time.”

A hollow chance. They both knew this wasn’t amnesia. It was too selective for that. No, Hux had purged her memory of their good times and left only the bad. To hurt him, to punish him, to cripple him and the rebellion. To break her. He could have killed her, but his malicious brain had decided it was worse to send her back to him in pieces. And Ben thought maybe Hux was right. Maybe it was worse to see that strong, radiant woman shatter. Rey had survived so much on her own, but he wasn’t sure she had survived Hux.

“Do whatever’s best for her,” he snapped as he turned away from the healer and shrugged off her comfort. “I don’t care what it costs. If you need something, ask.”

He closed the refresher door behind him, dropped his shirt, and punched the wall. The sterile metal buckled where his fist connected with it and he swore as the pain radiated from his knuckles. The water of the ‘fresher’s shower cascaded down his back as he stumbled into it and leaned against the wall. A memory sprang before his clenched eyes unbidden.

~ ~ ~

The force connection that had sprung up between them had come as a surprise. A breeze had ghosted his back and his shoulders stiffened as the fresh wind carried the sense of her into his stale rooms. It took him a long moment to turn around and confirm that she really stood there, half in his chambers like a phantom. Her hard eyes surveyed him unflinching, her feet braced apart as if ready to run or fight.

“I thought the connection was closed,” he said softly. He didn’t try to put his mask back on. She’d seen it slip from his face already. Surprise registered on her face.

“Me too,” she admitted. With a heavy sigh, she came and sat down in his stiff-backed chair. He suddenly wished he’d gotten a better one as her shoulders slumped. His snide comment got lodged in his throat. He sat down across from her on his bed.

“Why’d you do it, Ben?” Her voice was quiet, as if the words had slipped out despite her best intentions. “Why couldn’t you give it up?”

He thought he understood what she couldn’t say.  _ Why’d you choose the power over me? _ He didn’t have an answer. “You couldn’t either,” he reminded her, although he knew it was petty.

“These are my friends, Ben,” she said, and her voice was rough. “The only friends I’ve ever had. The only home I’ve ever had. The people you’re with don’t care about you.”

“How would you know?” he snapped and hated how childish he sounded. All hail the Supreme Leader. “I’m not soft. I don’t need your compassion.”

Rey didn’t flinch at his tone. “Your eyes are lonely. Everybody needs someone.”

He wanted to deny her words but found he couldn’t. He’d been Supreme Leader for two months, but his days had gotten no easier, his nights no quieter. He jolted from sleep at least once a week to the image of his lightsaber through Rey’s chest, the words,  _ I’ll destroy her _ , ringing in his ears and burning like acid on his tongue.

“I can’t go back there, Rey,” he said finally.

“Why?”

“I can’t face them after…” he swallowed hard. “After what I’ve done. I don’t deserve their forgiveness or yours. They won’t accept me, and they shouldn’t.”

Rey got up and moved to sit beside him. “I’m here, Ben. I’ll convince them.” Her eyes were earnest. He wanted to believe in the hope in them. “I’ll tell you where we are. You can come to us.”

Ben stared at her. What he could do with that information…a dying flicker of Kylo Ren wanted to use it to break open the Resistance. To show her how misplaced her trust really was. “You would trust me with that? Why?”

Rey laid her hand over his. “I feel the good in you, Ben. Stop fighting it. Come home.”

_ To me.  _ He heard the unspoken promise ring between them. It sounded so tempting. Home. With her to welcome him. Finally, a place to belong. Peace. But he shook his head. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“Why?” Her voice bled her disappointment. She pulled her hand from his shoulder, and he belatedly regretted the loss of contact.

“There are things I have to do here first. For the Resistance. I can take them down from within.” He’d been considering it for a while, as the lack of her presence grew harder and harder to bear. And top of that list was killing Hux.

“You don’t have to prove yourself, Ben. Not to me,” she said.

He clenched her hand in his and felt it as she began to fade. “I need to prove it to me.”

She left him with the ghost of her hand in his and four words, “come home soon, Ben.”

Almost six months later, he felt her presence again. This time, he was in the hold of a small ship in an attempt to get some privacy and meditate to re-center himself. Rey’s presence rushed in like a spring breeze brushing his face, an odd sensation in the sterile hold with nothing outside but the emptiness of space. Her hand rested on his slumped shoulder.

“Ben,” she said. He caught her hand in his.

“Rey,” he breathed. Her name came out like a prayer.

She circled him until she could see his face and he hers. She placed a soft hand against his cheek, pale in contrast to her tanned and calloused skin, and traced the deep circles under his eyes. “Ben, you have to stop this.”

“I’m almost done,” he tried to protest.

“No. You’re going to kill yourself,” she insisted with tears in her eyes. “Please,” she whispered. The word tugged him deep inside. He remembered his own desperation when he had uttered the same word to her.

“It’ll be worth it.”

She braced her hands on either side of his face. “Nothing is worth this.”

“If I don’t kill Hux,” he said, closing his eyes. “He’ll haunt us until we die.”

“Let him try,” she said with resolve. He opened his eyes to see the stony set of her face. “We’ll deal with him together. You’ve done enough.”

Ben met her eyes and felt the same resolve settling into his bones. “Where are you?” It was the first time he’d ever allowed himself to ask. A small smile flickered over her face.

“Sorice,” she said. A planet on the outer rim. But this ship was fast. He could be there by midnight on her planet.

A wave of unease turned his stomach. “You’ll be there?”

In answer, she stretched up on her toes and kissed him. “Come home to me, Ben.”

The Force pulled her away again and left him with the ghost of a kiss he hadn’t had time to return and renewed determination. He pulled his lightsaber from his belt and stalked towards the cockpit.

~ ~ ~

Ben felt the water droplets strike his skin and wished fervently that he had stayed to complete that mission long ago. If he had killed Hux way back then, maybe Rey would have come home too.


	2. I'd give anything to hear you say it one more time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! I probably won't get a post in tomorrow on Christmas Day, so see you the day after and enjoy your holiday! Thanks for tuning into this little story.

Ben placed the last of Rey’s things into the small box, picked up her staff in one hand, and walked down the hall. His room felt strangely bare without the last vestiges of her things. At least before he’d had her ghost for comfort. Now, he supposed, he had a very different kind of ghost.

It didn’t come as a surprise when Rose intercepted him down the hall from Rey’s new quarters. He could just see her through the door sitting on the bed, twirling something between her hands. Thankfully, she didn’t look up or he imagined she would have burned the box he handed to Rose.

“Thanks, Ben,” Rose said as she relieved him of Rey’s worldly possessions. He nodded once and turned away. He didn’t want to see the pity in her eyes. But he did turn back for one last glimpse of Rey as she got her things. Her face lit up at the sight of her staff. He watched as she lifted the cloak from the box. Her brow furrowed as she pressed it to her face to smell the scent of home.

Ben tried to go about his day and attend to his duties and stay away from anywhere he thought Rey might be. He knew she was helping Rose with repairs on the Falcon because he’d suggested it and so he stayed far away from the hangar, although it was a rare day when he didn’t set foot there. He met with Leia. He checked in with Poe. He met with the pilots who’d managed to escape the First Order by hiding behind that moon. He volunteered for no fewer than four missions until Leia told him to knock it off, she wouldn’t send him off planet right now. He skipped lunch and resolved to take the dinner he’d promised Rose he’d eat in his quarters.

Despite his best efforts, he ran into Rey when he least expected it. He had a bad habit of reading over official documents while he walked across base, just to save some time, and so he very nearly ran her over. Instinctively, he stretched out a hand to help her right herself but retracted it at her wide-eyed stare. “Excuse me,” he said to feel less awkward and went to sidestep her.

Rey’s voice shot at his receding back stopped him.

“Why are you here?” she launched the words at him like a stone. He felt their impact but wasn’t sure if he visibly flinched.

Ben turned and regarded her closed face, those narrowed eyes, thin lips.  _ Because of you _ , he thought the words he couldn’t speak out loud. “I know you don’t remember,” he said softly. “But I’m here for the Rebellion and my family.” No need to mention that she had become his family. Rey and, belatedly, Leia.

But Rey bristled at his mention of her lost memories. Or maybe it was the mention of his family. “You tried to destroy the Rebellion,” she spat at him, fists clenched at her sides. “And you killed your own father. I may not remember everything, but I sure as hell remember that.”

Those deeds still smarted like open wounds. He had not forgiven himself for the red smeared across his hands. His Rey knew that. But his Rey had not come back. And he had no answer for her. For without Rey and her patient love, his story made no sense. Instead, he turned and walked away from her before his weakness could spill over onto his face.

“Don’t walk away from me,” she snapped and grabbed his arm, spinning him around to face her. She recoiled like she’d been burned by the tears brimming in his eyes. Rey stared at him as if he’d crawled from the lagoon outside and opened his chest to show her a beating heart. This time, she let him go when he walked away. He left her standing confused in the hall.

~ ~ ~

His ship landed with a hiss on the reddish soil of Sorice. A brisk wind battered his ship as the engines died down and sprayed the slick black hull with red dust. Everything on this planet was red: the sky, the ground, even the leafy plants that looked like inverted palm trees. Ben saw none of it. 

Outside, he could see a large group of rebel soldiers gathered to meet him. The welcome party didn’t surprise him. He had expected a cannon aimed at his ship, maybe and x-wing to shoot him out of the sky. Rey would have gotten the millennium falcon up there to protect him. 

He left his lightsaber on board the ship. After so long with it as his constant companion, he felt off-balance without its familiar weight. But he didn’t need it where he was going. If they shot him, he wouldn’t lift a finger. He’d run out of anger and spite to fuel his fight. 

The bridge hissed as it lowered. The rebels shifted, flexing their fingers on their guns. Ben walked down the ramp with his hands raised over his head, his thick black cloak rippling behind him. Rey stood directly in front of him in the middle of the ring of rebels. Her lightsaber hung at her side, but she made no move to draw it. Out of all the faces around him, she alone smiled. 

Ben stopped at the bottom of the ramp, unwilling to move further and come off as threatening to the rebel base. He could sense a thousand eyes on him, even if they only sent two dozen to meet him. Those soldiers shifted as Rey stepped forward. 

“Ben,” she said when she stood only a foot in front of him. The tension slipped from his shoulders to be called by his given name again, to be greeted that way. Belatedly, he realised that this scene looked much like one he’d seen before only reversed. This time, she held no handcuffs to bind him on the way to her leader. He assumed there would be no elevator ride either. 

Instead, Rey mirrored another familiar scene. She offered him her hand. The rebels gasped when he took it. With another smile like sunshine, she led him into the rebel base. 

~ ~ ~

It was a week before Ben could stand to enter the mess during regular meal times and see Rey seated among her friends. Her hazel eyes always locked onto him as soon as he entered any room and he could feel the clenching of the Force around her as she prepared to defend herself. Her power still knocked the breath from his lungs.

Ben tried his best to ignore her and carry on with his day. That resolve became harder when he felt glimmers of confusion on the other end of their Force connection, which only seemed to get stronger now that she had returned. He shut that down, sure that she remembered none of it.

“Alright there, Ren?” Emmaline asked shortly, but he could see the worry around her eyes. With her jet-black hair pulled tight against her scalp and her serious brown eyes, she’d meshed well in the Resistance, although she’d been one of the Knights of Ren in a former life. Once she had been Nesta Ren, the only one of his loyal knights to follow him into the Resistance. It had taken her weeks to remember her real name. Force-sensitive and sick of the First Order breaking the back of her home planet, she had been with him from the beginning.

“Fine, Em, thanks,” he answered and took his seat among the small band at their table in the corner. He had spare few he would call friends in the Resistance, but if he had any at all, it would be these five. The rest of the Resistance tended to give them a wide berth, especially when they moved as a group. 

There was Emmaline and Set, one of the Stormtroopers that had followed Finn’s example and defected. He’d followed the ex-trooper in naming himself too. Then they had Hal, a graying man who’d once been an imperial pilot and now led the Kamikaze squad into increasingly dangerous missions. Beside him sat Tarlan, a small, six-armed pilot who’d told at least thirty original backstories for himself to date, including that he’d once flown with Han Solo himself. Finally, there was Ansara, a Togaruta female who had supposedly been trained by Ahsoka Tano herself before entering the Resistance.

It was Ansara who leaned around the others to ask, “how’s Rey?”

“About the same, Sara,” he answered. All five frowned down at their plates, even Hal, who generally liked no one at all. Rey had come to eat with them sometimes and had become friends with each in turn. But because he had been too tied up in those memories, her recollections of them were fuzzy at best. It was hardest on Ansara to pretend they didn’t know her.

“Damn,” Tarlan muttered, scraping the leftovers on his plate with his fork. “I need her to fix my speeder again.”

“Ask Rose,” Ben suggested. “Rey will probably come too.”

Their conversation drifted away from Rey and to the Kamikaze’s upcoming mission. Ben had given Hal the maps and coordinates and intel and trusted him to carry out the mission, but he still worried every time the crew went out. He’d considered going with them, but they flowed better without him. He only got in the way anymore, no matter where he went.

Ben, Ansara, and Emmaline went to spar after lunch. Ben enjoyed the workout and it was rare when both women were on base at the same time. He’d always supervised Em’s Jedi training but had taken over Ansara’s as well when Rey went missing. Neither were very strong in the Force, but their talents were useful in their current climate.

“Again,” he said when Emmaline fell back in the face of his onslaught. She held up a finger to beg for a moment. Ansara too slumped back against the wall when she failed again to lift a rock she’d raised easily two weeks before. Ben felt the rolling of the Force around her. He pressed the button to deactivate his lightsaber.

“We’re done for today, Em,” he said, and she nodded her understanding. “Find time to meditate soon.”

The woman left the room with a passing pat to his arm. Ben controlled his instinct to flinch. He still hadn’t gotten used to people touching him kindly. He walked over and slid to the ground beside Ansara.

“What is it, Sar?” he said to her heaving shoulders.

“It’s Rey,” she gasped out when she could control her breathing. “I miss her. And I know she’s here,” she added in a rush. “But she never came back, did she? Not really.”

He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “We’ll have to live with what we do get. At least she’s alive. Relationships can be rebuilt.” Ansara’s anyway. His, well, he wasn’t so confident.

Her fist clenched on her leg. “I’ll kill him for what he’s done.”

“You’ll have to get in line.”

Their long silence was interrupted by a metallic rolling sound that could only signal the arrival of BB-8. The orange and white droid rolled in a moment later, already letting out a long string of beeps.

“Hold on, BB-8. What did you say?” he asked as the droid bumped into his foot and beeped again impatiently. “No, that can’t be right.” BB-8 answered with another lengthy series of almost incomprehensible beeps. “Rey’s looking for me? You’re sure? Alright, alright, I’m going.”

Ansara followed him out but left him to trail after BB-8 alone. He exchanged a look of confusion with her as they parted. Maybe Rey had finally found her lightsaber and wanted to slice him in half. It would be a fitting end to their story. He wondered if that would hurt less.

He found her in the hangar, crouched beside Tarlan’s speeder with a wrench in her hands and grease on her pants. She didn’t look up as his footsteps approached. He cleared his throat and tried to look non-threatening even with his lightsaber dangling at his waist. “Rey, you wanted to see me?”

She leapt to her feet at the sound of his voice, the wrench clattering noisily to the ground. A few heads turned in their direction but snapped away again at the sight of Ben. Rey bent to pick up her wrench without taking her eyes off him.

“Right, yes,” she said. She set the wrench down and wiped her hands on her already greasy pants. “I, uh…er, well, that is, Poe…” she trailed off and his brows creased in concern. “Well, Poe explained what you’ve done for the Resistance and I guess I just want to apologize…”

His forehead wrinkled further. “Apologize?”

She nodded and wrung her hands. “For misjudging you, I guess. I still don’t really trust you, but there must be things I can’t remember and everyone else seems to trust you at least a little…” She swallowed. “You can’t be all bad, I guess.”

As an apology, it was rotten, but he knew she couldn’t reconcile all the conflicting things inside of her. “You have nothing to apologize for,” he stated.

“I do…” she started and then stopped, holding a hand to her head. He reached out a hand to her instinctively but pulled it back when she recoiled. “I just can’t understand how you’re so different. What happened?”

“I had enough of the First Order,” he said. “Give yourself time and rest. Your memory will catch up.”

She nodded, her eyes distant and trained on something behind his shoulder. “Yeah…yeah, I’m sure it will.”

She fell silent for several long moments and he summoned his courage. “Are you alright, Rey?” he asked as gently as he could.

Rey snapped back to herself and blinked a few times. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for coming to find me.” 

She turned back to the speeder, and Ben could tell at once that she wanted to be free of his looming presence. Somehow, that cut even deeper. He nodded to her half-turned back. “Anytime. Let me know if you need anything.”

Rey didn’t answer as he left.

~ ~ ~

Rey went with him on his first mission. He hadn’t been allowed off-base or anywhere remotely important for two whole months. He couldn’t say he blamed Leia and the other commanders for this precaution, although he longed to get out from under the hateful glances thrown his way. 

The day before his mission, he had been on his way to the hangar where he could at least help replair ships or unload cargo if nothing else. The other workers had slowly gotten used to his presence, even if they were still uneasy when he came near. Ben usually worked on his own. Down an empty hallway, he had suddenly been confronted by three pilots with a grudge to settle and muscle to spare. 

Ben had refused to fight back. 

Rey hadn’t clung to the same scruples. He watched in awe as she pushed his three attackers off him and alone handed their asses to them before drawing her lightsaber and facing off with them in its wavering blue glow. 

“Cowards,” she’d spat at them, her face a twisted mess of contempt. They shrivelled under her gaze and condemnation. “He’s off limits. If I even suspect you’ve  _ touched  _ him again, I won’t be so generous next time.”

She’d left them to scramble off down the hall and crouched before him, wiping the blood from his face. He winced as her hands skirted over fresh bruises. 

“Why didn’t you fight back?” Rey whispered, her fingers gentle on his skin. 

He shrugged and winced again. “I deserve it.”

She shook her head firmly. “No, you don’t. You changed. You came back. They don’t know what you’ve done for us. The First Order is weaker than it’s ever been.”

“I know what I’ve done, Rey. It haunts me every night. I’ve killed people, tortured, destroyed families. People here have reasons to hate me. Hell, they have ample reasons to kill me.” She just brushed the hair out of his face. “How can you bear to look at me? Touch me?”

Rey gave him a small, sad smile. “You make me believe that we can win. You’re proof that there’s still good left in the galaxy.”

“You are the good left in the galaxy,” he answered without thinking. In response, she just pressed her lips to his forehead with sadness in her eyes. 

The next day, she went with him on his mission to defeat or turn the Knights of Ren. Only Emmaline had come back. 


	3. That the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to post soon, but I can't promise when that will be. I CAN promise that I will finish this work (because it's already done) and answer all of your lovely comments. Enjoy!

Ben sat in the cockpit of his smaller ship, the one he’d brought from the First Order and used when he needed something smaller than the Falcon. The one he’d rechristened  _ Scavenger _ . He flipped a few switches and prepared to leave lightspeed. His mission was a simple reconnaissance and resupply one in a neutral system, and he’d returned with a shipload of weapons, but it had taken him off-base for over a week. A week he had sorely needed to clear his head and work out the painful throb that had taken up residence in his chest.

Not that a week had been enough for all that.

“How’s it going, R2?” he called to the ancient droid. R2D2 sent back a series of beeps that were half in answer to his question, half curses. The droid had grudgingly accepted flying with him but had not stopped swearing at him since. To make matters worse, BB-8 had picked up a few from the other droid. He smiled at the memory of Poe and Rey chasing that ancient droid across the base when they’d found out.

Ben dropped out of lightspeed and the greenery of the planet came into view. He steered his ship through the atmosphere toward the hidden base. The hangar opened to meet him. Almost as soon as he shut down the engines, Rose opened the hatch and climbed aboard.

“How’d she hold up?” the mechanic asked him, checking the systems on the shipboard computer. R2D2 rolled by with a string of beeps. Rose shook her head. “How he still hates you after a year and a half of flying with you…”

“He doesn’t hate me, but he doesn’t want to admit it,” Ben said and earned himself another string of curses.

“Watch your language!” C3PO’s voice floated up the gangway, and Ben cracked his first real smile in months.

“So, how’d my girl hold up?” Rose asked to bring him back to the task at hand.

“I hardly think the  _ Scavenger _ counts as your girl,” he objected. She made a face. “All good. No issues.”

A squad of rebels climbed aboard to offload his cargo, so he and Rose disembarked together. His eyes scanned automatically for Rey and he found her crouched under an old freighter they’d all given up for lost, even Rose. She followed his gaze and sighed.

“She’s been at it all week,” Rose said softly. “I told her it’s hopeless, but she won’t leave off it. I don’t understand it.”

“She’s a scavenger at heart,” he said, watching her work from across the hangar. “She always fixes broken things.” Like the Falcon. Like him.

The sun had gone down by the time Ben finished his debriefing with Leia and the cursory inspection of the weapons he’d hauled in. Ben was still too restless to consider sleep. Intergalactic travel always threw off his sleep schedule. He went outside instead in the hopes of a clear night.

The night was not clear, though. Weighty clouds had moved in since he’d landed, and a light rain fell in the greenery. He climbed out onto the rock anyway and let the rain soak him straight through. It comforted him as it splattered on his upturned face and ran in cool rivulets into his shirt, a reminder that he no longer wore a mask and a heavy cloak to dampen all sensation. 

“Ben?” The sound had him on his feet and turning in an instant. Rey stood at the other end of the rock, her face only just illuminated by the glow spilling from within. His mind raced to catch up. She had called him Ben, not Kylo, not  _ you _ .  _ Ben. _ “I’m sorry. BB-8 said you were out here.”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and tried to look like her voice hadn’t called to him like a ghost’s. “Rey. How are you?”

Instead of answering, she stepped out into the rain and crossed to the edge of the rock to stand beside him. “Why are you standing in the rain?”

Her presence and question shocked him into honesty. “It reminds me where I am. And where I’m not anymore.” He’d gone years without feeling rain aboard the First Order ships. 

Rey nodded with understanding. “We didn’t have rain on Jakku.” Her eyes cut into him and he suddenly wished he felt a little less vulnerable around her. “No one will talk about you around me.” He looked down, anything to get away from her piercing gaze. “Why?”

Ben shrugged and tried to sound unconcerned. “They know our history. I’m sure they’re trying to ease your transition.”

Her brows scrunched. “Ease my transition?” She thought for a moment. “I tried to attack you when I first arrived, didn’t I?” He nodded slowly. That fierce anger had faded after a while, for which he was grateful. Her looks, full of confusion bordering on disappointment, still cut at him, but they were better than her hatred. He hoped it wouldn’t return. “But I must not have hated you before. Why didn’t they just explain it to me?”

Ben ran a hand over his face. He really hadn’t planned on having this conversation with her, least of all in the rain with his system still thrown off from all the jumps to lightspeed. And Rey had begun to press dangerously close to things he’d promised not to tell.

“You have a lot to process. They don’t want to overwhelm you with too much at once,” he reasoned.

A fire lit in her eyes. “I don’t need to be coddled. I need to know what I’ve missed so I can remember and stop feeling like so much of me is missing.” She dropped her head to her hands. Again, he moved to reach out to her but stopped himself. She pulled herself back together again in a moment. “I know I didn’t hate you,” she said quietly, eyes far away. “Even when I came back, my mind said I should, but I just couldn’t. We were friends, weren’t we?”

A thousand things flashed through Ben’s mind. Rey’s smile, the look of surprise on her face before he’d kissed her the first time, the feel of her lips on his, her hand in his. And the whispered promise that she would return that she hadn’t kept.

“Of a sort,” he answered. This was worse, he thought. Watching Rey reach towards her lost memories and puzzle out their past was worse than not having anything at all. He ran a hand over his face and faked a yawn that didn’t reach his eyes. “I have to go to sleep,” he lied. “Lightspeed travel and all.”

Rey nodded, her eyes on something he couldn’t see. He left her sitting out in the rain. Ben knew from experience that she liked the rain and thought best in it. Maybe it would help her remember. He went back to his quarters though he knew he wouldn’t sleep that night. He hadn’t slept through the night since she left.

~ ~ ~

Ben still wasn’t sure how he’d gotten so lucky to have Rey even  _ kiss  _ him, nevertheless acknowledge their relationship in front of the rebellion or, kriff,  _ sleep  _ with him. She stood in the doorway of their ‘fresher without a shirt or a scrap of modesty and crossed her arms over her chest. Force, how had he been so fortunate?

“You’re an idiot,” she told him. It was not an unusual statement, coming from her. She called him an idiot at least once a week and he usually deserved it. 

“For what specifically, this time?” he clarified, wrinkling his nose as he wrung water out of his hair. 

Rey rolled her eyes. “I was just in the briefing. For taking this kriffing mission of course. It’s too dangerous, especially for you.”

Ben watched her in the door of their ‘fresher, framed by the light and casual mess of their room.  _ Their  _ room. It had become theirs slowly. At first, Rey just left things behind when she left and he’d chalked it up to her general messiness. Because she  _ was _ messy. Then, things started to stay there permanently. It took him a week too long to figure out that Rey had officially given up her previous quarters and moved in with him full-time. 

When he’d asked her, she’d just shrugged and her cheeks had darkened a little. “Rose decided to move in with Finn and I didn’t want another roommate and I figured you wouldn’t mind, since I’m here most of the time anyway.”

He hadn’t pushed her for a better explanation. 

Now, he cleared his throat around the emotion building there. He still wasn’t used to having someone  _ care  _ about him, not like Rey, aggressively and with abandon. 

“I’ll be fine, Rey, I promise. I’ll come back,” he answered at last, although he knew he couldn’t promise that. 

She frowned. “Are you still punishing yourself for your supposed sins? You’re part of the rebellion, Ben. You have been for half a year. Let it go.”

“I’m not,” he lied a little. “I’m not punishing myself. Someone needs to go on this mission, why not me?”

Rey looked ready to present him with an alphabetised list of reasons why not, but she just stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his middle, resting her chin on his chest. “Just please come back. I can’t do this without you.”

Ben thought about her plea as he dragged himself back to his ship, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He slapped a bacta patch over the blaster wound and flipped the switches to make a dangerous jump to lightspeed. Somehow, he hadn’t died on the way back. But he had collapsed after landing. 

After that, he remembered Rey hovering over him as he moved, her hands covered in blood and her face in worry. “Please, Ben,” she begged him. “Please don’t go where I can’t follow.”

He cursed himself for breaking his promise. 

That night, in his bunk, Ben touched the scar left by the blaster. She hadn’t kept her promise either. 

~ ~ ~

Ben lugged the last box onto a freighter set to depart to an outpost in the outer rim. As he descended the gangplank, Poe walked up it. “Rose is looking for you,” the pilot said.

He nodded and turned his steps towards the Millennium Falcon, where he knew she was working again. The old ship had never looked better than it did under her and Rey’s constant care. Han would have been proud. And then promptly trashed it again. Sure enough, he found the mechanic staring up at the underside of the ship.

“Rose,” he said by way of greeting.

“There you are. Finally.” She walked over to a piece of equipment that came up to his knee.

“Poe only relayed your message five minutes ago,” Ben said as an apology.

Rose waved him off. “I need you to lift this up to the top for me. Please.”

Ben eyed her. He was almost certain that they had droids and machinery to do exactly what he was about to accomplish with the Force. Rose just gestured for him to proceed. He took a moment to center himself before tapping into the Force and lifting the part easily onto the ship. Every mechanic and pilot in the vicinity stopped to watch. He ignored them and settled it where Rose indicated.

“Is that all?” he asked.

For the first time, Rose looked unsure. “Well, if you don’t have somewhere to be, could you help me install it?”

Rose stood and shifted before him. As a matter of fact, he always had somewhere to be, but nothing sounded more appealing at the moment than working on the Falcon with Rose. But he also sensed a trap. “I thought Rey was helping you?”

“Oh, she is, but she’s helping Finn today,” Rose answered quickly with a hint of a smile.

“Alright.” He nodded. “I have a bit. As long as you won’t make me lift all your tools with the Force.”

Rose beamed and hauled herself up onto the Falcon. Ben followed suit. The part, as it turned out, was fairly easy to install and mostly required him turning a wrench repeatedly. The view over the hangar couldn’t be beaten, though, and he enjoyed the refreshing lack of prying eyes. Rose was a good companion too, raw and easy with him in a way that few were, even now.

“I’m worried about Rey,” Rose said after a while of silence, and Ben gathered that this was the real reason she’d requested his presence. He waited. “Sometimes she seems like herself and other times she gets this look in her eye like she’s watching something far away and walks around like she’s empty. I don’t know what to do. It’s been over a month.”

“She hasn’t had much time,” Ben tried to comfort her. “It’ll take more than a month for her to recover. And we shouldn’t expect Rey to be the same person she was before. That kind of trauma changes a person and many of her memories are gone on top of it all. It’s not her job to get them back. It’s our job to learn who she is now.”

Rose stared at him over the metal rise of the Falcon. “I don’t know how you watch her walk around and not remember you without going mad,” she said softly.

“It’s what she needs,” he answered and kept his eyes on the work he was now glad she’d given him.

“Do you still love her?” Rose asked. Her question took him by surprise and he sat back.

“Of course.” He swallowed. “I can’t not.” He ducked his head to tighten the last bolt. “Done.”

“Thanks for the help,” Rose muttered.

Ben nodded and started climbing down the ladder. “Rose,” he said, still half-poised there. She looked up. “I never deserved her. That’s how I bear it now. She always deserved better and now she can have it and I have to be grateful for the memories I have already.”

“I think she’ll choose you again,” she answered. Ben left without another word.

It was late the same day when Finn ran up to him. Ben had just left a meeting with Leia and a few others and wanted to relax alone in his ‘fresher. The sight of the frazzled ex-stormtrooper stopped him in his tracks. Finn rarely spoke to him, even when Rey had spent much of her time around him. That didn’t stop him now.

“It’s Rey,” Finn gasped out.

Panic seized him, and he gripped Finn’s shoulders. “Is she hurt?”

“We can’t find her,” he managed.

Ben’s head spun. If he was this panicked, they’d been searching for a while. “Are any ships gone?” he demanded. Finn shook his head. “Did you check with the spotters?” He nodded. “When did someone last see her?”

“At lunch. She sat with Rose and I,” he said.

“Tell Leia,” Ben ordered. “I’ll check the south side.”

Finn nodded and started through the door Ben held open for him. “BB-8, fill him in!”

Ben let the droid roll along beside him and beep his messages as he ran through the halls. Rebels dodged out of his way when they saw his massive form hurtling through the narrow space. They had checked her room, all her friends’ quarters, and the hangar, where they’d initially expected to find her beneath that ship she’d been fixing up. Now, Poe had the north, Rose the east and med bays. He hoped Finn would remember that he had gone south, although now he questioned the likelihood of finding her in the personnel quarters.

He checked her old bunk that she’d shared with Rose first, with a short rap on the door that scared the pants off the two young mechanics that now shared the space. He double-checked Finn and Rose’s quarters too with BB-8’s help. The small rec room on this side of base held only a couple Tanganese. All the halls held many people, but none of them were Rey.

It was on a whim that Ben returned to his own quarters, just in case. He didn’t expect to see anyone inside when he opened the door, but Rey sat on his bed, staring down at a shirt in her hands.

“Go tell the others I found her,” he told BB-8 before stepping inside and sliding the door almost shut. He thought Rey would balk at being alone in a room with him, but she just looked up through watery eyes.

“How did I know how to get in here?” she asked.

Ben knelt before her. “Are you okay, Rey?” he asked, his eyes glossing over her and looking for something to explain her disappearance.

She shook her head. “I’m so confused. I came back here without thinking about it. I feel so lost. Like some big part of me is missing.”

Ben sat before her and tried to catch up to her words. She had come to his quarters—their quarters—automatically. It meant nothing. It had to mean nothing. Rey still didn’t remember why she had ended up there or that she had once made his dull quarters feel like home. Despite all the warnings in his head, a small kernel of hope crept into his heart. After all, she had remembered something, even unconsciously.

“Ben,” she whispered when he didn’t answer. His head snapped up at the sound of his name on her tongue. “I need to know. I’m so confused. Please.”

_ Please. _ Her plea, so soft, reminded him of his own. A hand, reaching out to her, the aching hope in his chest. It broke him.

“You came here,” he said, the edges of his words torn and raw. “Because you lived here. With me.”

Rey looked around the room. Her gaze fell once again on the shirt she held. It was his, but Rey had stolen it to sleep in long ago and never given it back. It had remained draped over his chair since the day she hadn’t returned. He hadn’t bothered to pack it up with the rest of her things.

“We were lovers,” she said finally. “Weren’t we?”

“Yes,” he admitted without meeting her eyes. He hated the word.  _ We were so much more. _

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He couldn’t tell if her voice shook from anger or pain.

Ben sighed and pulled himself into his chair. “The healers asked me not to. It appears that Hux erased all positive memories of me. Everyone thought it better if I didn’t tell you, since…” he trailed off.

“Since I tried to kill you?” she finished for him. They sat in silence for long moments. “Something keeps pulling me toward you, like there’s something I should know. I guess this is it.” He didn’t know what to say to her. “I don’t remember, Ben. I’m sorry. I wish I did. But it’s just…gone.”

“I made my peace with that a while ago. You owe me nothing, Rey. Nothing,” he said and hoped she’d believe him.

He felt her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll keep trying. I promise.”

And then she was gone. Just her stolen shirt remained, same as last time.

~ ~ ~

Ben stood beside Rey on the ramp to the Falcon and wished they hadn’t accepted quite so many responsibilities in the Resistance. He’d tried reasoning with Leia too, all to no avail. He would never admit that to Rey. She would murder him if she knew he’d protested her assignment. 

“Surely they can send someone else?” he suggested for the tenth time. Rey glowered at him with such a fierce reprimand in her eyes that he sighed. 

“I’m not too important for this mission,” she reminded him. “Anything we can do for the Rebellion is worth it.”

“Not if we lose you.” The words were ripped from his chest before he could consider their wisdom. 

Rey gave him a soft look full of understanding. “I’ll be fine, Ben. I always am. A hundred missions later and I’m still fine. I’ll see you soon.”

Ben choked on his words. He hated when she had to leave, especially without him. It wasn’t that he believed her incapable of taking care of herself. She’d done so alone for many years. But he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her. 

“Sometimes, I wish we could just leave. Set up a farm on a planet and just live. Not be the two most powerful Jedi in the galaxy, just us,” he admitted not for the first time. 

Rey touched his cheek, her eyes watery. “I love you, Ben. And you’d be bored in a week. We’re where we need to be, even if that’s dangerous sometimes.” 

He nodded but he couldn’t help that dream that lingered. One day perhaps, after the war. “Don’t go where I can’t follow,” he murmured, kissing her palm. 

She shook her head firmly. “I won’t. I promise. I’ll come back. And you know I always keep my promises, Ben.”

He did know. After all, she’d come back for him. 

So, he kissed her one last time and let her board the Falcon alone and tried to ignore the desperate unease in his chest. 

They had found the Falcon wrecked a week later. They had not found Rey. 


	4. With a love too deep for words, I am yours forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has to face the thought of Rey disappearing again.
> 
> Title from Rose of Sharon by Mumford and Sons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it, guys! Thank you to everyone who read and waited for this last chapter. I hope you've enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments!

Now that Rey knew about her relationship with Ben, she had to meet the odd bunch he called friends, who had been dying to talk to her. And Ben took it upon himself to run interference. Emmaline elbowed him as they watched Ashana and Rey walk away arm in arm.

“That went well,” she said. Ben glanced around at his other friends. Hal had just lit up a roll of something inside the mess hall.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It did go well.” About as well as it could have. He turned to go, but Em pulled him back by his elbow. “What?”

“She’s overwhelmed, Ben,” she said.

“There’s not much I can do about that, Em,” he answered. “She insisted I tell her.”

“Just keep an eye on her,” Em warned in her usual prescient way.

Over the course of the next week, Ben did keep an eye on Rey. He saw what his friend had already noticed: the way her eyes widened at everything around her, how she shook her head as if to clear it. He made sure to catch sight of her or exchange a word several times a day. Rose and Finn kept an eye on her too. But she mostly worked on that old freighter or sat silently at meals. Every day, she seemed farther away, as if her very skin had become transparent.

Ben jolted awake in the dead of night, his chest heaving. He knew instinctively that something was wrong. The Force crackled along his skin and shimmered in the air around him. He rolled out of bed and threw on the first shirt he could find. It stuck to the sweat on his skin. He slid into the hallway on bare feet and sprinted towards the hangar.

He found Rey aboard the Falcon, dressed with a sack thrown over her shoulder and her staff in her hand. She surveyed the Falcon, dragging a hand over its metal surfaces, like she was saying goodbye.

“Rey,” he gasped out.

Her shoulders stiffened, and she turned like she’d expected him. “Ben.” Her eyes were bottomless.

“Where are you going?” he asked in desperation. He took everything else back. This was worse. Watching her leave again was worse.

“I can’t stay. I don’t belong here anymore,” she whispered.

“You do belong here, Rey. This is your home,” he argued, and this was one argument he couldn’t afford to lose.

She shook her head. “I can’t remember, Ben. I can’t remember you or us or what’s happened in the last few years. I don’t know who I was or who I am anymore, and I’m useless here.”

“If there’s something I did to drive you away, I’ll leave instead. Rey, where will you go?” He’d beg her to stay. He wouldn’t force her, but he’d do anything to keep her from leaving. He couldn’t watch her leave again and know this time that she wouldn’t come back.

She shook her head again, holding back tears. “It’s nothing you’ve done. It’s nothing anyone has done.” She slipped around him and out of the Falcon. He followed her up to the gangplank of the freighter she’d spent so long repairing. There she turned back to him again and blocked his entrance. “I’m sorry, Ben. I’ve tried to remember, but I just can’t. Just let me go, Ben.”

He remembered her flaming, victorious smile, her hoots of excitement from the gunseat of the Falcon, them fighting back to back, her legs wrapped around his waist at night. “I can’t,” he choked out. He remembered their hands touching across the galaxy beside a fire. “I can’t. Please. Rey, please don’t go where I can’t follow.”

Ben remembered the throne room, sparks showering the red-clothed bodies around them, his hand reaching out to her.  _ Please. _ He remembered an intense pain and darkness and Rey leaning over him with bloody hands. “Ben,” she’d said, voice distant. “Don’t go where I can’t follow.”

He returned to himself and felt the force waver around them, felt their bond snap into place as it hadn’t since he’d closed himself off from it to save her further confusion. Rey reached out and gripped the metal panel of the ship, her staff clattering to the ground. She pressed her other hand to her head. His heart sank as she shook her head as if to clear it. She would leave again and this time she wouldn’t come back at all.

“Ben,” she said finally, and he clung to the sound of his name in her voice, sure that this was the last time he’d hear it. Her hazel eyes focused on him, clearer than before. He waited, half reaching out to her, wanting to comfort her against whatever was raging in her head. He could feel her turmoil, the swirl of her thoughts, but he could no longer tell which ones were her memories and which belonged to him. “I remember.”

“What?” He took a step closer to her but didn’t yet dare to hope. The air around them had turned thick as paste. 

“I remember. I love you. I remember.” She looked up at him with a small, stunned smile. “How could I have forgotten?” She let out a carefree laugh. “I remember it all!”

Ben didn’t know when his legs gave out beneath him, but he sank to his knees. Rey took a shaky step forward and laced her hands through his hair the way she always had before. She had always said that she loved his hair. It felt…like home. It felt like everything he’d been missing for the last year. Sometime in the midst of her touch on his skin and her confession in the air, tears had started flowing from his eyes.

“Shh,” she said into his ear. Rey slid to the ground with him and crawled into his lap, curling herself around him. “It’s alright, Ben. I kept my promise after all. Darling, I’m so sorry.”

Everything he’d kept locked away inside of him for the last year broke free. He choked out his apology through the sobs soaking the shoulder of her shirt. She held him through his tears, rubbing calming circles into his back. “I’ve missed you, Rey,” he confessed. “I thought I would die without you. I think I did for a while.”

“I’m here,” she soothed him. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” And he knew she understood. If she remembered, then she knew how much he needed her. 

Ben couldn’t stop crying. He chanted her name with every ragged breath, inhaling her unique scent and everything he’d been missing. She kept her hands on him, threading in his hair, running across his back, smoothing the lines on his face. “I never stopped searching,” he said finally. “I never gave up, Rey. I would have crossed the universe to find you.”

“I know,” she breathed. “But I specifically told you not to do that.”

“When have I ever listened well?”

She let out a broken laugh that he felt in his cheek. Finally, when the flood had subsided somewhat and he felt more like a person, he peeled his face away from her chest and looked up at her. She laughed at him a little, smoothing the hair back from his face. “You’re a wreck.”

“Yeah, I have been. But I’m better now.”

Without further words, she brought her lips crashing down on his. There were still many things they had to figure out, but right now the only thing that mattered was her lips on his and his arms curled around her waist.

But after they sorted everything out, he thought. After that, he fully planned on hunting Hux and delivering every painful torment he could think of.

~ Four months later ~

By the time they made their way through the destroyed hallways to what remained of the throne room, almost nothing stood in their way. The scene reminded him strangely of the last time he and Rey had fought together in a throne room. That room had been burning too. This one lacked a Supreme Leader split in two, but he fully planned on rectifying that at the earliest opportunity.

Which, he thought, had just come. Because they arrived to find Hux alone with his Praetorian Guards. Those looked familiar too. But this time, he and Rey dispatched them in a matter of two minutes. Hux ran for the distant escape from the room, but Rey dragged him back with the Force and left him sprawled in the center before his throne.

When they stepped up to him, one on either side, he said nothing at all. Rey’s blue lightsaber cast a bright light over her face.

“I’ve come to pay my debts,” she said simply. The thunder of gunfire sounded outside the ship as the Rebellion destroyed the remnants of Hux’s fleet. “Any last words?”

“Don’t you want a public execution?” he spat.

“And give you a glorious death? I think that’s more than you deserve,” she answered, kicking him over when he attempted to rise. “I won’t give you the satisfaction. No one will remember your name when I’m through with you.”

“Bitch,” he snarled, earning himself another kick in the teeth.

“You tried to break me,” Rey snarled down at him. “You didn’t succeed.”

It was satisfying, he thought, to see her standing over her captor in triumph, strong and unbroken. He’d wanted this exchange to go a very different way, but Rey deserved to deal with Hux however she wanted. After all, the First Order general had annoyed Ben many times, but he had tortured Rey. 

“I wanted to keep you alive,” Ben told him simply, almost lightly. “For a very long time. I wanted to break and reset every bone in your body. I wanted to make you feel everything you put her through twice over, three times over. But Rey’s calling the shots here and she’s more merciful than I.”

Hux grinned and opened his mouth to say something. He never got the chance. Rey beheaded him with a single, swift blow from her lightsaber. And Ben felt no pity as the Supreme Leader’s head rolled over a couple of times before coming to rest, surprise dying in his eyes.

This time, he did kiss Rey in the burning throne room. For the last time. He never wanted to see another throne room again.

~ Six months later ~

Rey propped her feet up on the dashboard and tossed another cookie into her mouth. Chewbacca bleated something at her about dirtying the dash, and she turned around to give him a piece of her mind, a few strands of her hair slipping out of her buns and ghosting around her face. Ben watched her and thought for the five hundredth time that she really was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Did you just say I’d get it  _ dirty _ , you great hairy lump?” Rey snapped. “Don’t give me that. I talked to Lando. I know you and Han  _ destroyed _ this ship. She’s never looked better! I take better care of her than you ever have!”

Chewie protested her accusations, but the Falcon beeped to let them know that they were dropping out of lightspeed, as if it agreed with Rey. Ben couldn’t argue with her. She and Rose continued to take great care of the ship and any other that came under their care.

Rey stared flipping the controls as they prepared to land on what used to be the main Resistance base. It no longer functioned as that, but it had gained new importance as the burgeoning center for the Galactic Republic. However, they would soon leave the swampy planet behind. A new capital was underway at that moment on Endor. Leia planned to transfer there with her staff next week.

“Think we should tell Leia that Chewie broke her door?” Rey asked him as they guided the ship in to land. The wookie bleated his protest to that comment as well, and Rey laughed. “Alright, alright, they’ll fix it, and no one will be any the wiser.”

“We do need to decide what we’re going to do, though,” Ben reminded her. “Leia’s offer still stands.”

But Rey just grinned at him. “We’ll figure it out. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”


End file.
